Secret Knowledge: The Private Life of a Doll's House BBC4 - TV review

The only thing that shouldn't have been miniaturised was the programme's running time

Ellen E. Jones
Wednesday 04 March 2015 00:00 GMT
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Happy childhoods are spent coveting only one sort of house: the delightful miniatures pored over by Charlie and Lola author/illustrator Lauren Child in Secret Knowledge: the Private Life of a Doll's House. Child has been an obsessive since childhood and even based the interiors of her hit series on the Seventies Swedish Lundby doll's house model

Is it too late to ask Child to be my godmother? She took her goddaughter on a trip to the Kensington Dollshouse Festival where crowds gasped in delight at tiny record players, teeny dinner sets and minuscule pet tubes of toothpaste. For those who don't already appreciate the magnetic charm of the miniature, there was also some explanation from psychotherapist Philippa Perry (wife of Grayson), and a visit to the 100-strong historical house collection at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in east London.

The only thing that shouldn't have been miniaturised was the programme's running time. That half hour could easily have been extended into two magical hours of pint-sized property porn. Location, Location, Location – only, y'know, smaller.

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